Because when I ask my students “What didn’t exist in 1986?” I might as well as them “What didn’t exist in 1591?” as the idea of rotary phones and no cable=lived when there was no electricity and to sterilize something meant you set it on fire.

Rahid built a “stupid filter” app for Twitter in order to screen out all the dumb messages about what people ate for lunch and all the “OMG! Earthquake in Samoa, pray for them” messages and when he implemented it, he found that worldwide, all but about four tweets a day had been screened out.

“I’m sorry, Josie, but you blew the library’s entire budget buying dozens of copies of everything ever written by Tami Hoag and every book with ‘for Dummies’ in the title and quite frankly, I was planning to fire you, but now I’m so embarrased to be associated with this institution that I’m quitting and you can have my job… good luck!” said Ms. Martinez, picking up her old canvas bookbag, her thirty-years-of-service plaque and the “World’s Best Librarian” drawing that the kids reading club had hand-drawn for her and walking out.

Henry was led to believe that one of his friends had been doing nothing but painting her toenails for the last 46 days straight; he couldn’t understand this, but then he’d never been very good with women.

An apology to the homeless drunk who had the temerity to approach my open window at the intersection looking for directions to the bus stop: I’m sorry I pulled the knife on you, I’m sure you were really no threat to me.